Google Delays Planning to Return to Office By A Few More Months While Juggling on Flexible Work Week
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA (NYTIMES) as the current pandemic are still in full swing while the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine have just started to ship into the US, Google has planned to push back their plan on returning back to the office by another few months till September 2021.
However, even as this remote work period is getting an extension, Google is laying out a series of proposals that may change and alter how their staff can work compared to other people working in other technology companies. The Chief Executive of Google’s parent’s company, Sundar Pichai said that the company is currently testing the idea of a flexible work week once it is safe to return to the office and currently they are under the pilot plan that employee would be expected to work at least 3 days a week in the office and working at home on the other days with a collaboration days system.
As no other company at their scale has ever created a fully hybrid workforce model before so it might be interesting to give it a try. Meanwhile, Mr. Pichai’s email also mentioned that all staff is required to take the coronavirus vaccine before returning to the office while the current Google’s plan to roll out this flexible plan is still up in the air as a different state of the coronavirus in different countries and the new schedules may not apply to some Google employees such as workers who are required to spend a lot of time with customers or employee at its data centers or labs.
As in March, Google was the first company to tell all their employees to start working from home before other corporations have taken the precaution steps and after such a long period of remote works, companies now are wrestling with how to best transition workers back into office. As of last month, ViacomCBS told their employees that they are expecting the employee to divide their time between working at home and in its office which would allow more flexibility for employees while reducing the real estate needs and keeping the cost down.
Google currently also planning to keep developing new ways t help their employees bridge the gap between the experience of working at the office and working from home especially for employees who may be living in places not suitable for remote working.